I spent this weekend reading and researching what it really means for startups and entrepreneurs to become part of the Internet chatter and get the company/product/brand name to be recognized among selected target segment. All this has to happen in an efficient and cost-effective way.

I am in the process of writing my third book so the chapter for this topic is “Market segmentation, marketing and sales strategy for a Microsoft partner”. I agree, it is an ambitious topic and I had real issues of deciding where to start. I have learned a lot of new things this weekend and here are a few pointers to books that I have come across.

The bottom line is that smaller companies have hardly any money to marketing, so whatever is done, needs to be done without major investments. Where does one start? My conclusion (assuming that you have an idea of your business model) is that it all starts with selecting what your target segment is going to be and then you build your value proposition that resonates with this target group. Without a solid, easy-to-understand value proposition, you will be struggling to attract anybody. And trust me, I have seen and experienced this myself many times. How many times have we seen software startups with engineers in the cockpit building the next rocket without really knowing who is going to buy it. I have seen a few of them and some of these have been documented in books and case studies. The value proposition is then transformed into a solid web-site and will become a part of social media initiatives in channels such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The cyberspace is full of different tools that one can use and quite a few books that explain how and what should be done. One of these is the book by Halligan et al. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs that gives a bunch of practical examples of how organizations can market themselves by practical means such as blogging, email marketing, community building and the book also includes a selection of practical advice how a good web-site should look like.

Your web-site should be actionable, and following types of content is the most typical that you can create and maintain:

Blog articles if your blog is within your site

White papers that educate your audience about the domain that you represent

Short videos about your industry

Webinars – live online PowerPoint presentations of your industry

Podcasts

Webcasts

Whatever you decide to use of the above elements, you’d better do it in a professional way and not half-heartedly like we can see in many web-sites that we have visited. If you want to be in international business, forget about having your web-site in your native language (if it doesn’t happen to be English) as you will never have the time to maintain many languages. Trust me, I have seen it too many times myself.

Once you have your web-site the way you think it should be, it is time for you to analyze the traffic, convert visitors to leads and leads to customers. The question whether you should put some money in paid search is something many organization are contemplating as some research has shown that 75% of the searchers stay in the organic search results and only 25% are clicking on the paid links. If you want to learn more about SEO, you might want to buy Sean Odom and Sean R. Odom book SEO For 2010: Search Engine Optimization Secretsand when you want to learn everything about web analytics, the bible is definitely Avinash Kaushik book Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity which really explains in great detail what is web analytics is, metrics behind it and how that matters in your business. Great book and worth the money!

Marketing can be very pragmatic and by understanding the social media channels, it provides great opportunities for small companies to become known in its own domain. What is sad is that social media resonates negatively in some people’s mind, but the reality is that that is where the market is going whether you want it or not. It is time for you to face the reality and start by learning and creating your own strategy and how to execute on it. The other thing that people forget is that social media does not provide an easy and quick fix. You have to build your cyberspace presence and give evidence that you really know what you do and provide educational messages to your audience. People do not want to be sold to, so quit sending sales messages to your Twitter feeds and Facebook sites. The smart users have selected their Twitter followers by the topics that they are interested in, as otherwise one will be drowned in information.

Whatever you do in your marketing efforts as a startup or entrepreneur, you have to do it in a smart way and avoid spamming of any sales related stuff that people are sick and tired of. I truly believe that the time of traditional cold-calling is over for software companies and it is time for us to learn how to cope with the Internet and anything related to activities around it. Good luck with your studies of Marketing in the new age of social media!

I am lucky. I have now concluded more than 30 interviews for my upcoming book Rohkeasti maailmalle. As an author, I have to say that I am very humbled of the hundreds of years of experience that people have given me in the form of stories of their personal life and how their families have adjusted to new countries. These stories are based on real life, they are not fiction and therefore very valuable for the readers. The process has been also pretty demanding on me as the focus and concentration during the interviews is typically intense.

I am now doing my final touches on the book before I send it for first iteration round to the publisher. It is far to long as of now, but I am sure my beautiful editor that I worked with in my first book knows what to take off from the book… And she does it so well without getting me mad.. I am sure that every author has some “odd” thinks that editors have to deal with.

I just returned from Finland and had a good meeting with my publisher Talentum. We agreed that the manuscript needs to be done by mid-February and the provisional publication month is May 2010. I am in the final process of interviews of many interesting emigrants and expats that want to share their story. These people include professionals from different countries; from Asia, Africa, South-America, Europe, US etc. I have to say that this book has been fun to write as it has so many interesting things that I am able to share. I am also going to have an international version of the book as it will have broader appeal for sure. This upcoming week I have scheduled many new interviews and will select the most interesting ones as profiles in the end of the book.

Also, I am in the process of building an educational program around these topics as they are extremely important lessons that can be learned from people that have done it, seen it and ready to share what they know and feel about living outside their respective country. I have been in a fortunate position to know people around the world and all of these connections and discussions I have had has accumulated knowledge and experiences that one can’t buy from anywhere.

I am in the process of doing interviews to my upcoming book from Talentum. This book is about living a life outside your own native country with all of the different things that you will be facing during the years. I am looking for individuals, families to be interviewed in topics such as:

1) Reasons for moving abroad

2) How have you been able to balance your new life with your career outside your own native country

3) How do you deal with the fact that you can’t be active with your family back home

4) How do you deal with the fact that your parents are aging and you are not able to help them out?

There are lots of things that you do not think about when you move abroad and this new book will deal with lots of these issues, but will also give lots of good advice, advice that I did not have when I moved to US more than 10 years ago from my native Finland.

It is time to reveal the name of my new upcoming book. We have agreed it to be ” Rohkeasti maailmalle – onnistu liike-elämässä ja ihmisenä”. If one translates it to English, it is close to following: “Bravely out into the wide world – become successful in business and as a person”. My first book “Onnistu suuressa maailmassa – opas globaaleille kilpakentille” (Become successful in the big world – guide to global competitive markets) came out to book stores in January 2008 and I feel that this new book is a continued effort to discuss about international business, but now from another perspective and this perspective has to do with how you live your life outside your native country.

I am very excited about this book as it includes so much accumulated experience from tens/hundreds of people that I have met during the years living outside my own native country. During the weekend before last, I spent the 2 days in my Helsinki flat working on the final table of contents, its structure and I feel very happy how it flows. I will reveal more about the structure soon, so stay tuned!

When we emigrate to a new country, we do not typically think about how to deal with our aging parents and other family members back home in your native country. I am sitting in a tram in Helsinki on my way to my wife’s mother who has been very illa for quite a while. How does one support the family if the travel takes 18 hours one way? How does one take the message when getting a call in the middle of the night that somebody has passed away like we did when my wife’s dad passed away 5 years ago? We do feel helpless and powerless and no money on this earth will make that better as money cannot buy precense, money can buy help that has nothing to do with love or passion for a person.

I am sitting in a tram in Helsinki, the sun is shining and I have a bunch of Russian tourists around me on their way to downtown Helsinki (city-center). Observing the environment, wondering how I can transform this environment to my new upcoming book is what I am thinking about. Businesspeople such as me have numerous days in different places around the world and this is something that I have decided to use effectively.

I bought a book (The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality) to my Kindle DX from an author (Lee Gutkind) that describes the process of writing a nonfiction book; what goes in ones mind and what kind of life one can expect when living an authors life. I highly recommend this book for people that want to learn and have an interest to become an author.

I am currently in Finland and will be meeting with my publisher to discuss about my upcoming book that will be my second book from the same publisher. I have been thinking/contemplating and pondering about the content and it is pretty much in my head now and I have to get it on paper as well… I am very excited about this new project and the content will be very timely for many of us!